The player-cams for the post-match antics involving the collegiate showdown between American University and Worcester Poly were quickly censored after the trio at American University held up a “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizzard” sign.
Dexerto reported…
“Following the incident, player cameras were removed from the event’s coverage and replaced by images of the game’s leading characters, in according to Blizzard’s official rules..”
You can see what all the hubbub is about with the clip below.
The sign was held up right as the American University team lost in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. The opposing team snickered gleefully as they watched their opponents torpedo any chance of being featured on a Blizzard livestream in the near future.
As pointed out by e-sports consultant Rod Breslau, Blizzard also canceled all remaining interviews for the night.
Blizzard has notified Collegiate Hearthstone teams that there will be no more interviews tonight
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 9, 2019
This comes after Blizzard suspended Chung ‘Blitzchung’ Ng Wai from Hearthstone competition for a year and rescinded all of his prize money for yelling “Liberate Hong Kong!” in a post-match interview. Blizzard also fired the two commentators who participate in the post-match interview with Blitzchung.
These pro-censorship antics netted Blizzard a couple of social media trends of the boycott variation.
As noted by Breslau, the Twitch chat for competitive Blizzard titles also became a sounding board for anti-censorship and pro-Hong Kong messages.
Twitch Chat is a force of good pic.twitter.com/74pGNFkuR9
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 9, 2019
The boycott rhetoric even extended to social media such as Reddit and Imgur, with artists attempting to co-opt Blizzard’s characters from games like Overwatch to get them to promote pro-Hong Kong messages.
The situation was actually exacerbated because Blizzard’s move came at a time when China also banned South Park after they aired an episode criticizing China for its censorship and the NBA for getting in bed with China despite all the inhumane antics being exacted by the Chinese State party.
So far Blizzard hasn’t made any announcements about potential sanctions taken against American University for supporting Hong Kong, but if they suspended Blitzchung for voicing his support for Hong Kong, don’t be surprised if American University receives some sort of punishment as well.
(Thanks for the news tip Ebicentre)
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